The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  Once someone asked, “Lew, know where you’re going?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Ogallala.” That was all he knew. Willy Nickle had promised there would be a double butte to turn him east onto the trail. He didn’t know when.

  In these days, riding point or scouting for his rock piles, he had little chance to talk with Joy and Steve.

  He knew Joy was getting on all right. A man could drop out of line in this slow drift. Clay did, riding long hours beside her wagon.

  Passing them like that as he made his round behind the drags looking for lameness in the herd, he didn’t blame any girl for being drawn to Clay. You never saw a sleek little heifer go to a scrubby bull. There was that huge and vital strength in him, and no Texas buckaroo looked better on a horse. His saddle, extra big to carry his big shape, was stamped in flower patterns and inlaid with silver. Silver conchas on his hatband flashed in the sun. He wore a spotted calfskin vest. And it was not all show. His conceit had reason. Clay could ride anything he got a saddle on; Lew granted that. No outlaw horse had ever scarred his good-looking face.

  Those were the only times when he saw Joy laughing, when all of her lively spirit seemed brought up by the man.

  He had hoped someway this drive would give him a chance to get back on his old confiding terms with Steve. There was something hounding the boy; a lot of it, he felt, Ed Splann’s close watch.

  Steve was on his own night guard, and yet when they passed, riding their circles in opposite directions, he always pulled off to avoid a meeting, until once Lew swung his horse deliberately in front of the other.

  He grinned across the starlight. “You know,” he said, “we’ve had a lot of fun together. We had our first drink out of the same whisky bottle, and that isn’t all we tried. Those were pretty good times.” He sobered. Gently he asked, “Steve, what’s wrong?”

  Just for an instant he saw a look of inner torment behind the boy’s staring eyes. In that brief time he felt as if just the right word would bring the troubles flooding out. But he didn’t know the word, and then all of the clean-lined features were set again, guardedly and cold. Even this far on the trail a strain had aged and tightened that face. The boyish truculence had turned into something hard.

  “Wrong?” The demand came blunt and flat. “Nothing! What’re you driving at?”

  “All right.” But he could see the lie so clearly in the stiff tightness and the half turn of Steve’s head like a man forever watching behind him in the dark. “I can tell you something though.”

  Steve’s head swung back. Starlight showed the sudden glitter of his eyes. He sat like that, rigid and alert.

  Lew went on gravely. “There’s no trail so long that a man can get away from what he’s left on it. I’ve seen it tried. He’d better whip his troubles at the start. Things have happened, Steve. I know that.”

  “What do you know?”

  “You’ve got a watchdog here. Ed Splann. All you need to do is tell me. I’ll put him out of reach.”

  That jolted Steve visibly. His shoulders jerked. “You leave it alone!” And then all of his strained tension broke into a release of violent anger. “Nobody asked for your advice! Keep it to yourself and your damned nose out of my business.”

  “Take it right,” Lew said. “I’m not butting in. Go on.” He sat motionless, watching the stiff back vanish, and there was a cold bleak feeling inside of him with his knowledge of what he saw ahead for Steve.

  It was midnight now. Off in the darkness he could see the pooled longhorns making a move that came so regularly at this hour that a man could set his watch by it. There was only the silent wheeling of the Big Dipper’s handle to mark this time for them; no sound to break their sleep. Yet in some common impulse every animal had risen. He saw them stretch, yawn, shift a little. In another moment they all lay down again to rest until dawn.

  Quarternight’s white hair drifted toward him. Halting, the old man stood up in his stirrups, unwound the ten-foot red sash, hitched up his pants and leather leggings and wound it back.

  “They’re layin’ nice.” He nodded at the cattle.

  “They ought to,” Lew said. “They’ve got their bellies full. Feed a man or a cow and he sleeps.”

  “Without they’ve got something on their minds. Some has.”

  “Seeing things, John?” he asked.

  “Once or twice. You ever look in Clay’s bedroll when we quit guard?”

  “Well, no. It’s off from us. I never did.”

  “Sometimes,” Quarternight said, “he ain’t there. No,” he added promptly, “it’s not them two seeing each other out of school. We’re making too good time to suit him maybe. I don’t like a man to go wandering around afoot with four thousand longhorns bedded. They hardly ever see us split off from a horse. It spooks ’em plenty. That’s an easy way to start a run.”

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll keep better watch.” But any guess was as good as another about Clay.

  Long before he felt an uneasiness himself the cattle were smelling something in the air. He had marked six days in his logbook, estimating one hundred miles, when they came that late afternoon to the first stream bed on the plains. Pointing the herd into it, he searched on north for the double mountain landmark and saw only the unbroken horizon hard and sharp against the sky.

  In the stream bed there was no running water, only a chain of brackish pools. It was bad, and yet he knew that was not why the longhorns hardly stopped to drink. They dipped their muzzles briefly and moved on, their heads up high. Restless and bawling they milled on the bed ground, refusing to halt.

  That evening the sun turned into a red-hot stove lid low on the prairie rim.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Dust Storm

  In the short time that he knew was left he did all that could be done. He could feel the threat in the air’s very stillness now and in the way the cattle had stopped, to stand with every head turned south, their tails lifted and their legs sprung apart for instant flight.

  He put a double guard of men around them, lashed picket ropes over the canvas wagon tops and sent Jim Hope to night-hawk with Moonlight Bailey, bringing the horses in close and hobbling twenty near camp. He saw Owl-Head Jackson, unperturbed, starting supper over the fire pit, its glow ruddy on his bald pate.

  There was no warning. One moment all the camp made its picture clear before his eyes. Tom Arnold stood with a tin cup waiting for his coffee. Joy and Steve were sitting on the tongue of her wagon in one of their rare times together. Three dim-shaped riders were coming in for their meal.

  The next instant an unseen hand struck the campfire, scattering its red coals outward for a hundred feet. The wagon canvases bellied and slapped the bows like pistol shots. The starts were suddenly gone, and the wind’s full force with its choking dust was something that a man had to lean into strongly.

  No one needed his yelled order. Men were already running in the pitch dark toward their horses.

  He had been standing near a quiet-tempered bay saddled for this night’s work. In the little time that it took him to step into the stirrup and push out toward the longhorns he expected any moment to hear the dreaded rumble, like thunder, and the clack of four thousand animals on the run.

  Yet no sound broke the almost silent thrust of the wind. Here on the flat plain, with nothing to strike against, it made only a thin hiss through the short grass. Then the ragged black pool was ahead of him. He could see the way they had swung north now in the direction the wind was blowing and knew they were held from a run so far because no leader had started it off.

  Their tight fear had to be broken. He understood the slim chance a man would have, caught in that mass, if it jumped suddenly into its blind stampede. But there was no other way; he rode directly in among the hard, unyielding bodies.

  The familiarity of a horseman, his voice lifted in a wordless crooning, se
emed to ease their dumb brains. They began to move aside. They brought their heads down. He crowded on, weaving toward the middle.

  There were other riders around him in the dusty dark. Ghost shapes appeared higher than the ridgepole backs and vanished. He heard their voices. Someone was loudly singing a part of Sam Bass. “He was a good boss, fond of his licker—” The wind whipped the rest away. That, too, was familiar to the longhorns. They coughed and began a moaning complaint. Their first bad terrified minutes were over.

  He reached the farther edge and turned back again.

  In time, when a rider loomed close and he recognized Joe Wheat, he said, “Go in and get an hour’s sleep.” He sent them in by pairs.

  For himself there was no time out of the saddle. A man’s fortune, Tom Arnold’s, hung in the balance tonight. If this herd ever broke and scattered on the Staked Plain’s endless miles, it would be like throwing ninety thousand dollars in paper money up into the wind.

  He changed his horse every two hours, keeping a fresh one under him. This was where a big remuda counted. Back in camp the cook had circled his fire pit with kegs to shelter its blaze. The two-gallon pot of coffee was always ready.

  Until after midnight he had a certain hope. These storms came up with the suddenness of a hurricane, then often ended in a short time as abruptly as they had come. But at midnight the wind was still rising with a harder thrust. It would not end soon. By three it was blowing with a strength that made his horse unsteady. He knew the time by the strange unearthly light beginning to show a little of the herd around him. Their low-moaning complaint had gone on these hours. They began to move now in a stolid way, too tired to stand any longer, too restless to lie down.

  Their drift was with the wind, plodding and stubborn, and he thanked his luck for that. As long as the gale lasted they would travel north. Nothing could make them even quarter against it. But he was troubled about the horses. They would run in any direction. He couldn’t spare enough men to hold the remuda in check.

  Riding back in the first dusty brown light of dawn, he saw that Moonlight Bailey had already met that danger by leading four mares on picket ropes. Most of the horses were crowding up close. They would not desert their ladies. Jim Hope was riding behind them to catch any drift.

  From the campfire, loading up his kegs for an early start, Owl-Head yelled, “Breakfast, Lew? Got some beans with plenty of sand!”

  He shook his head and rode on to where Joy’s mules were harnessed. She was up on the wagon seat with a handkerchief across her nose and mouth, ready to drive. He stepped down and tied the mules’ halter ropes to the tail gate of the chuck wagon.

  He had to shout above the slapping rattle of canvas. “Get inside!”

  Only the blinking squint of her eyes showed over the handkerchief edge. Her voice reached him stubbornly. “This is my job.”

  He moved back to her, head down and leaning against the wind. “You want to go blind?” Sliding his arms under her legs and behind her back, he carried her to the rear end and put her in on the wagon bed. He grinned, feeling the dust dry in his mouth. “You won’t miss anything. Don’t stick your head out today.”

  She pulled the handkerchief down, squinting up at his red-rimmed, burning eyes. “Have you had any sleep at all?”

  “Sure,” he said, “plenty.” It was like trying to talk inside of a drum.

  Passing the cook again, he shouted, “Keep up close!” A man could lose himself in this smother if he ever missed the longhorns’ trail.

  In the short time since dawn the herd had drifted more than a mile. He followed their trampled swath and came to the ragged edge of drags. Only a few of their bony rumps showed; all others on either side and up toward the lead were blotted out by the brown dust.

  He continued along the flanks, picking up men, hardly recognizing the powdered shapes and masked faces except by their saddle gear.

  It was not a matter of driving the herd now, but of holding it back. Hour by hour as their thirst and heat grew they walked at a faster pace. The sun was screened above the dusty layer, and yet its fire burned down upon them intensified. There was no trail formation. They came on in a solid front, their great horns swinging from side to side as they crowded and spread out for a distance that he could neither see nor guess. And above the rumble and clack of their walk the openmouthed groaning rose to a sharper key that turned a man’s nerves raw.

  Ten men could do little against the thrust of four thousand animals. All their effort was to keep the cattle massed and block the increasing rush. In his limited vision on either side he could see his riders charge into the front, wheel away, and charge again. They used their rope ends and whipped their slickers into the long, gaunt faces. Then they were using guns. At any other time firing into the ground so close would have sent the leaders bolting backward. Still the dogged brute march came on.

  He could no longer locate his rock piles; only a slim chance would let him blunder onto the double butte. Each hour he could feel himself being pressed farther into the desert of the Staked Plain, beyond the last water that he knew.

  The wind and the futile charging and the longhorns’ demented noise strung him tight. Tiredness was like a lead weight in his arms and legs. Horses could be changed, but there was nothing in these hours to relieve himself nor his men. There was no coffee now to keep them going. Owl-Head couldn’t stop long enough behind the herd. Dropping back for a fresh horse, a man could ride alongside the chuck wagon, get a drink of warm water from a canteen, and fill his pockets with biscuits. That was their midday meal.

  He had changed his own mount five times since the morning’s start. When he went back again toward the middle of the afternoon he found the horse herd and wagons halted, bunched together. Two masked figures stood butting into the wind.

  Dragging off his saddle and throwing it onto the fresh horse that Jim Hope brought, he could not tell who they were. But then, moving toward them, he recognized Clay Manning and Tom Arnold. They were shouting together.

  He wanted a moment’s talk, somehow the reassurance of other men’s words. Bending beside them he yelled, “We’ve sure hit a bad one!”

  It was Clay next to him. His head turned. The violence of his answer bulged the handkerchief from his mouth.

  “A hell of a time to think of that! How you going to get us out of this?”

  Tight nerves snapped. “Fly out! You got a better way?”

  “Did have,” Clay flung back. “It was a fool move at the start!”

  “Lew?” Tom Arnold thrust himself in front of them. He looked shrunken and dried out. “You got any idea where we are?”

  He couldn’t have; they knew that. He shook his head and started to say, “All we can do—” A lash of the old man’s temper cut him off.

  “Then, by God, I’m damned if I know what you’re here for! This was no way to come!”

  He had no answer; you didn’t fight Tom Arnold’s temper. It would cool. And he understood the bitterness of what the man could lose. But at the same time he saw the quick vengeance in Clay Manning’s bloodshot eyes. He had got in his word with Tom.

  There was a horse bolting toward them through the dust. He didn’t see for an instant that it was running loose, its head up high searching for the herd, and that a man was hunched over, clinging to the saddle horn with both hands. He grabbed its bridle. The sudden stop flung the rider down into his arms. He pulled the handkerchief off. It was Steve. Both of his eyes were glued shut, the swollen red lids puffed out of their sockets.

  Struggling in the wind he brought the slack body up against him.

  “Steve!” he yelled. “It’s all right, boy. Try to walk.”

  Close to his side Tom Arnold shouted, “Get him to the girl’s wagon!” and reached out to help.

  There was shelter behind the end canvas. They got him up onto her bed and Lew heard the girl’s sharp cry. Light was dim insi
de. He couldn’t see her clearly at first as she bent over Steve; but then her head lifted, and of the three of them standing there at the end-gate she picked him out with a bitter reproachful look. It was as if this, too, was his fault.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Bathe his eyes and let him rest. He’ll be all right.” He swung from her and fought back to his horse.

  But that look went with him, turning him cold with what it showed. This was what it meant to be a trail boss. Whatever happened he would get a little credit—and all the blame.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Smoke Talk

  Steve, he knew, was only the beginning. By nightfall he had led others one by one back to the wagons. For a short time all the dusty air around him had turned to gold. It was blood red now in the sunset as he crossed the front of the herd, counting his men.

  Five were left spaced at far-apart intervals; himself, three older hands, Quarternight, Joe Wheat, and Ash Brownstone, and Charley Storms. As he passed each one he warned them, “Don’t try to stick it too long.” They nodded, throats too raw now for talk. Only Charley Storms turned his broad face and flung at him with unshakable good nature, “I’m doing fine! But wouldn’t this blow the feathers off a buzzard?” Then he was alone somewhere toward the middle watching the darkness settle down. They were not trying to check the march any longer. All they could do was stay with the herd. When it broke and began to drift he hoped some man would be with each wandering part.

  Sheer fatigue had slackened the pace. It was again a slow walk but as relentless as a powerful machine. Thirst was what drove these animals now, a mad fever that would keep them going until they found water or dropped dead. Their hoarse and frenzied bawling was swept forward around him in waves that rose and fell and sometimes burst into almost human screams.

  Even through his own dead feeling that suffering moved him. These dumb brutes would never have got themselves into this. An instinct better than man’s would have warned them. And he knew they, too, were going blind. He had seen the stuck eyes. But the sightless were being carried on forward by the packed bodies of the mass.